Chapter Twenty-Eight 28 December 2023
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Wait,” I said. “How much money do I have?”
I looked at the string of numbers in my banking app again. “Papa did this?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry… I thought he would have told you. He always said that if you could make it to thirty without needing his help, he knew you would be alright. But he still wanted you to be comfortable.”
I felt a familiar twinge in my heart, one I had spent my life struggling to identify.
I understood now that I was angry with Papa for being so proud, that I loved him and yearned for him, and always would.
We had waited too long and there was nowhere left for that love to go.
But I was grateful that I finally got to know him, even if it had to happen after he died.
“Okay,” I said to Mr. Eastaughffe, not bothering to disguise the tears that had thickened my voice. “Let’s do as he wished and stick with quarterly distributions.”
I glanced one more time at Papa’s birthday gift. It was enough to change the trajectory of someone’s life forever.
“There’s a hospital in Nairobi,” I said. “I’d like to make an anonymous donation—perhaps half? And there’s something I’d like to do with the rest.”
“It’s your money to spend as you wish.”
We made an appointment for later in the morning.
After breakfast, I left the house and walked to Mr. Eastaughffe’s office in Earl’s Court, trailed by Rita.
Once I was finished and had the cheque, I wandered into a park and sat on a bench.
The air was charged with the electrical current that signalled snow was coming, and I found myself holding my breath as I waited for the first flake to fall.
Rita stood under a tree nearby; as the year drew to a close, my security detail hovered even closer.
No more sneaking out to the pond on my own.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I knew it must be noon.
“Hello, James,” I said.
“Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.”
He paused. “The first one without your twin is the hardest.”
For the final years of his life, Louis and I had communicated only on this day.
Hey happy bday, one of us would type out in a fit of resentful obligation.
There would be hours of silence and then, finally, the other would respond: Thx u too.
On the last birthday we shared, we didn’t even bother to do that much.
“Does it ever get easier?” I asked.
“Not really. You just learn to live without the rest of you.”
We kept the line open as I sat on my park bench, and he stood in his dark hallway at the bottom of the world. We were two incomplete halves that would never make a full set, but he was all I had left.
“Do you remember the last time you and Mum spoke?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Although we didn’t really speak.
It was our birthday, and she called in the middle of the night.
She must have been touring through Scotland, and someone was singing ‘The Parting Glass’ for her.
They were singing it beautifully—just them, no instruments—and she held up the phone so I could hear it. ”
Both the Irish and the Scots claim the old song, but it doesn’t really matter who it belongs to, because we all like to sing it at the end of the night—one more drink before friends part. From the heavy white sky, the first flurry spun into view, and I breathed against my aching chest.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you don’t want to hear that, but I am. I’m so sorry.”
“Lexi,” he said, “you’ve spent the last year chasing the approval of a bunch of strangers, people who don’t know you and never will. But at some point, you need to forgive yourself. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to accept it from anyone else.”
A family went past, bundled in mittens and coats. I watched as they hurried under the steady snowfall.
“What if…” I said, my heart racing as the question of my life finally dared itself to be asked. “What if she could have been saved? What if I’d called the coastguard instead of him? What if she died out there because of me?”
James said nothing for a long time. “I’ve read everything there is to read about what happened. I don’t think she could have been saved.”
The snow burned my throat as I breathed in. “But we don’t know.”
“We don’t,” he said. “What I do know is that she loved you. And she didn’t want to leave you that night.”
The park emptied out as people vanished into the city. A light sifting of snow was accumulating on my coat, flakes caught on the tips of my eyelashes and in my hair. I remembered that I had a cheque for ￡1.5 million in my pocket that I probably shouldn’t get wet.
“I’ll talk to you in a couple of days,” I said softly.
“Stay in touch. Let me know when you’re safe.”
I made it back to Cumberland with Rita a few paces behind before the snow started to descend in a silent storm.
It was three days after Christmas, so those who hadn’t stayed in Norfolk for the week would be watching from their windows.
At exactly 2 p.m., the car rolled into view, a white van with WILLIAMS CARPET CLEANING written in bright red letters on the side.
The older relatives didn’t like it when servicemen clogged up the quadrangle, but I would need to endure their disappointment one more time for this to work.
When the bell rang, I found a young man, no older than nineteen, with Mary’s slight features and narrow shoulders.
He had the same fierce eyes that seemed to see everything.
Across the square, a lace curtain shifted in a second-storey window.
The boy patted Chino, who appeared at the door to greet this stranger, and then smiled at me. “Hey. I’m Charlie.”
He rolled a carpet cleaner and a heavy plastic trolley into the living room, and we shut the door behind him. My suitcase and backpack stood by the stairs.
“So… I can actually clean some carpets while I’m here since you’re paying me and all,” he said. “The noise will kind of add to the whole thing.”
“Oh,” I said. “If you want? I’m moving out of a room upstairs, so maybe it’ll be nice for the owner if it’s all clean.”
His machines droned so loudly upstairs that I almost missed the knock at the door.
I edged closer and saw Stewart through the windows.
When he spotted me, he waved, leaving me no choice but to open the door to him.
The trolley stood in front of my suitcase and backpack, and I hoped Stewart wouldn’t try to come into the house in case he saw them.
Luckily Chino leapt forward, whining with excitement and pawing at his pressed grey suit.
“Forgive the intrusion, Your Highness,” he said, trying to politely push Chino’s nose out of his crotch. “I saw the workman’s van, so I assumed you were home.”
I could never recall an aide dropping by uninvited. He must have seen Charlie’s van and come prowling over to check on me. The moment called for me to be irritated. If I looked as terrified as I felt, his suspicion would be confirmed.
“What do you need?” I asked brusquely. “I’m trying to get the house in order before I move out.”
He dropped his head. “Yes, of course, apologies. I have some documents for you to review. They’re not the kind I can just email to your office.”
I took the manila envelope from his hands but made no move to open it.
“Okay,” I said.
We looked at each other. When I was small, I would sometimes flee the tears and shouting at Cumberland 1, cross the quadrangle and find Stewart’s door among the row of staff apartments over the garage.
Reluctantly, he would let me in, and I would sprawl on his living-room floor to watch TV in peace.
A bowl of crisps would appear by my side, but he otherwise left me alone until, eventually, he looked at the clock and sent me home.
He hesitated. I wondered if he too remembered he had once been the only stable adult in my life.
“I do wish you had come to me, ma’am,” he said finally. “I think you know that I’m fond of you. If you were having trouble, I would have been able to help you.”
I nodded, remembering all the small kindnesses he had shown me—so that by the time he had asked me to open my mouth and placed the dropper of sedative under my tongue, I complied.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” I said. “When I was a child, I loved you. I used to pretend you were my father. But when I needed you, I didn’t go to you for help.”
He opened his mouth, hesitating again. After a pause, he bowed slightly and said, “Review that document and we can discuss it in a few days.”
He walked back down the steps, careful of the snow.
“Stewart,” I called and he turned. “I don’t remember much of the days after my mother died—you made sure of that—but my body never forgot it. That’s why I didn’t go to you. I couldn’t make myself do it.”
He had the decency to look ashamed, but I knew drugging me into submission was the least he would do in service of the monarchy; perhaps he even told himself he had done it to protect me.
Again, he bowed—deeply this time—and walked back to his tiny apartment, an old man dressed in a suit three days after Christmas. Chino watched him mournfully as he left us.
“Come on,” I said, and he cocked his head. “It’s almost time.”
An hour later, Charlie trotted down the stairs and started packing up his equipment.
He heaved my bags into his trolley and swung the lid over the top.
I watched from the window as he loaded them into the back of his van.
When he came back, his brows were furrowed, the way Mary’s were when she was concentrating.
“Are you ready?”
I nodded, suddenly nervous. When I looked back at the drawing room, I remembered that it was the place Louis and I once built forts out of sheets and fought over the remote, it was where Mum tried to teach herself the guitar, and Amira and I had curled up together almost every night for a year.
This house was my first home, and I was certain I would never see it again. I looked at Charlie and nodded again.
“Okay,” I said.